“As
successive imperialist powers have shown, the bottom line in combating the
hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading terror
through the application of extreme violence.”

-- Max
Fuller, “For Iraq, the ‘Salvador Option’ Becomes Reality”

The
notion that Iraq is now consumed by civil war depends on a number of
assumptions that are inherently false. First of all, it assumes that the
Pentagon is ignoring the fundamental principle that underscores all wars:
“Know your enemy.” In this case, there’s no doubt about who the enemy is:
it is the 87% of the Iraqi people who want to see an immediate end to the
American occupation. Therefore, the greatest threat to American objectives
of permanent bases and occupation is the camaraderie that manifests
itself in the form of Arab solidarity or Iraqi nationalism.

To
this end, the Pentagon, through its surrogates in the media, has created a
“self-fulfilling” narrative that civil war is already under way. Most of
the war coverage now makes it appear as though the violence is generated
from ethnic tensions and sectarian hatred. But is it? Some of the more
astute observers have noticed that other parts of the propaganda war,
(like references to the “imaginary” al-Zarqawi) have completely vanished
from the newspapers, as government spin-doctors are now devoting 100% of
their time to promoting their latest product line: civil war.

In
fact, if any of us were involved in the Pentagon’s “pacification” plans
we’d probably be doing the same thing. After all, the War Department is
already overextended, so a plan had to be devised to divert attention from
the occupation forces and get Iraqis to kill each other. The only
reasonable choice is to incite “sectarian violence” and make civil war
inevitable. That, of course, is the task of the American trained death
squads. (The New York Times has confirmed that the Interior
Ministry death squads were trained by American forces)

For
three years the Iraqi resistance has successfully kept American troops on
the defensive; taking control of more area, destroying pipelines and oil
facilities at will, discouraging enlistment in the Iraqi Security Forces,
and undermining public support among Americans (63% of who now believe the
war was “a mistake”).

These
are the goals of every guerilla movement: a gradual erosion of public
support, deflating morale, surprise attacks, and eliciting greater support
from the general population.

It is
clear that this has been a winning strategy for the resistance, and not
one that they would readily abandon to pursue an ethnic/religious war.

So,
where does the violence originate? Could it be that the independent
militias are engaged in sectarian war without help from the greater
resistance?

It
could be, but it’s not likely. Again, the only one who benefits from civil
war is the US military, and it’s clear that the military has no other
option but to follow a “divide and rule” strategy. They simply don’t have
the human resources for any other plan.

In a
larger sense, the “alleged” sectarian violence is consistent with what we
have seen in previous CIA-run operations in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Negroponte are alumna of those conflicts (which,
according to Cheney, succeeded quite admirably) so it’s probable that they
would apply what they have learned about counterinsurgency to the ongoing
war in Iraq. The El Salvador experiment proved that the masses can
eventually be terrorized into compliance.

Isn’t
that what is taking place in Iraq?

In
Iraq, terror is being used as a substitute for security, because the
United States has no intention of providing the manpower or funding needed
to maintain order.

Death Squad Democracy

Video
footage of a massacre outside of Nahrwan, east of Baghdad, has appeared on
the Internet showing the bodies of Shiite laborers who were allegedly
killed by Sunni death squads.
Journalist Paul McGeough was given the tapes and is planning to report
on their content in the Sydney Morning Herald. In one
incident, four adults were pulled from their vehicle and either shot or
stabbed to death in front of a 5-year-old boy whose father was one of the
victims. When the townspeople came to investigate the scene, they
discovered the bodies of 48 men and women who had been dumped in a ditch.
The corpses showed the signs of having been “systematically murdered. Most
were shot but some appear to have been stabbed and mutilated.”

It is
the “stabbed and mutilated” part that should interest us. After all, the
intention of the Iraqi resistance is to gather greater support for their
cause, not to alienate ordinary Iraqis through gratuitous acts of murder.
If, however, this was the work of American-backed death squads, then the
alternate goal of “governing through terror” has been achieved.

Journalist McGeough sticks with the same, feeble mantra as the
establishment-media to explain the tragedy: “The current round of
tit-for-tat sectarian violence was sparked by the bombing of the Samarra
mosque -- a holy site for Shiites. In the immediate aftermath, there were
reports of many killings and fears that Shiite reprisals could see the
country descend into a civil war.”

Isn’t
this the official narrative?

The
media insists that the destruction of the Golden Dome mosque was a
“9-11-type event” which caused an up-tick in the bloodshed. But, was it?
Or was it merely part of a broader (covert) strategy to foment civil war?

There’s evidence that the plan to divert attention from the occupation
forces is succeeding. In February the military reported less servicemen
killed (31) than in any month in the last year.

Isn’t
this the goal?

In Max
Fuller’s seminal article “For
Iraq, the ‘Salvador Option’ Becomes Reality” the author disproves the
idea “that sectarianism is a sufficient explanation for the violence in
Iraq”. Instead, Fuller says that what is taking place is in “the hands of
the state” and a “part of the ongoing economic subjugation of Iraq.”

Fuller’s well-documented article is indispensable in making sense of the
apparent chaos:

“In
Iraq, the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the
destruction of the existing state, which did not comply with the interests
of British and American capital. The second phase consists of building a
new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector of
society. Openly, this involves the same sort of shock therapy that has
done so such damage in swathes of the Third World and Eastern Europe.
Covertly, it means intimidating, kidnapping, and murdering opposition
voices.”

Fuller
backs up his observations with ample evidence; citing open-source material
he has compiled in his research:

“What
we do know, however, is that hundreds of Iraqis are being murdered and
that paramilitary hit-squads of the proxy government organized by US
trainers with a fulsome pedigree in state terrorism are increasingly being
associated with them.”

The
objective of the death squads is not simply to target one particular group
or ethnicity, but to direct the violence outwards creating as much fear as
possible in order to pacify the population.

Fuller
winds up his polemic with a summary statement that confirms the long and
bloody history of colonial wars:

“The
pattern is repeated time after time in every imperialist so-called
counter-insurgency war; for behind each and every one lurks the reality of
exploitation and class war, and, as successive imperialist powers have
shown, the bottom line in combating the hopes and dreams of ordinary
people is to resort to spreading terror through the application of extreme
violence.”

A
spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, Hareth al-Dhari, put it
more succinctly than Fuller: “This is state terrorism.”